Perlick Brand Guidelines: The 1917 Milwaukee Brass Works Behind a Century of Beer Systems

A brass shop in Milwaukee, 1917.

Perlick began in Milwaukee in 1917. The Oxford Companion to Beer, published by Oxford University Press in 2012, says the company was founded as R. Perlick Brass Works by Robert Perlick and his son Walter, on the second floor of a building in downtown Milwaukee, and that its first focus was brass items for the automotive industry. The company’s own history adds that Robert Perlick was born in Germany, came to Milwaukee with his family in 1885 and worked in tool shops before starting his own business at the age of 41, partly on a loan from Walter.

The company places that first works in Milwaukee’s Third Ward and says it made brass parts and battery terminals for makers of cars, trucks, tractors and streetcars. Its own accounts use both names for the early business, the R. Perlick Brass Works and the R. Perlick Brass Company.

Prohibition, which from 1920 left only low-alcohol “near beer” legal, changed the firm’s direction. The company says it became the only maker and distributor of brass dispensing products for Milwaukee’s breweries in those years, and that Walter’s brothers Arthur and Hilber, known as H.R., joined the business. After repeal, The Oxford Companion to Beer says, Perlick was chosen as the exclusive supplier for A. O. Smith’s glass-lined beer tanks, went on to make fittings for refrigeration equipment and later started its own refrigeration division.

Under H.R. Perlick, the company says, it tripled in size in the 1930s, added a refrigeration department as bars moved from ice boxes to mechanical cooling, and introduced its first direct-draw beer system toward the end of the decade. In the 1940s it marked its 25th anniversary in a new building, had more than 300 staff, and introduced the Dixie bottle cooler and the Black Beauty cabinet dispenser. During the Second World War, the company says, it machined aluminium parts for the United States war effort.

Beer systems, underbars and home refrigeration.

The product Perlick’s own histories return to most is the Century Beer System. The company describes it as the first glycol beer system able to carry beer up to 100 feet from the keg, says it made its debut in restaurants at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and says it was soon taken up at sports stadiums across the country. A later redesign, it says, extended beer runs to as much as 1,000 feet.

In the same decade the third generation, Robert D. and Gordon Perlick, moved the company to a new headquarters and plant on Milwaukee’s northwest side, which the company and the Oxford Companion both put at about 300,000 square feet. In the 1970s, as more drinking moved into taverns and restaurants, Perlick turned toward bar design: the company says it introduced a modular underbar system, sold as Topshelf Modular Workboards, and began offering complete bar packages of beer, back-bar and underbar equipment. Automatic glasswashers followed in the 1980s, according to its centenary account.

The Oxford Companion to Beer describes three divisions — bar and beverage equipment, tapping, and brewery fittings — and a catalogue running from refrigerated cabinets, glass-washing equipment, liquor display cabinets and stainless-steel sinks to beer faucets, keg couplers, party pumps and dispensing heads, with fittings made to work with other manufacturers’ products. It adds that the company has representatives in every American state and Canadian province.

In the 2000s Perlick moved into homes. The company says it invested in continuous production and lean manufacturing before launching premium residential refrigeration, and that from 2005 the line won three consecutive Platinum Awards for Design Excellence from Design Journal. Its current commercial range, as its website presents it, includes the ArcticPOUR beer system and a forward-sealing beer faucet alongside back-bar refrigeration and underbar equipment.

Bars, cellars and trade shows.

Beverage dispensing makers sell to two very different counters. In a pub or bar, the visible parts are the font on the bar top and the tap handles fixed to it, which usually carry the brewer’s branding while the equipment maker’s name sits on the hardware underneath. In a quick-service restaurant, the visible part is the post-mix tower or self-serve dispenser, where drink brands and, more and more, touchscreens take over the front panel.

Most of the machinery is out of sight, so the makers explain it on paper. Catalogues and spec sheets lean on cutaway diagrams of coolers, carbonators and insulated beer lines, on line drawings and wiring diagrams, and on photographs of keg cellars and cold rooms where kegs, gas cylinders and couplers are connected. The literature is written for installers, service technicians and distributors as much as for the owner of the bar.

The trade meets at shows. The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago gathers foodservice equipment, including fountain dispensers and ice machines; BrauBeviale in Nuremberg covers brewing and the wider beverage supply chain; and the Craft Brewers Conference in the United States brings draught-system suppliers face to face with brewers. Makers also name certifications, audits and sustainability ratings in their own newsrooms, as Lancer does with its ISO certificates.

Ownership often runs through larger groups. Lancer has been part of the Japanese refrigeration maker Hoshizaki since 2006, according to Hoshizaki’s corporate history, and Cornelius went to Berkshire Hathaway when the British engineering group IMI agreed to sell it in 2013, according to English Wikipedia; its website now says it is powered by Marmon Foodservice Technologies. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

Five generations in Milwaukee.

Bartenders have shaped the recent range. At the 2015 NAFEM Show, the company says, Perlick unveiled the Tobin Ellis Signature Cocktail Station, developed with the bar designer and competition bartender Tobin Ellis; the company calls it the industry’s first ergonomic, “zero-step” bartender’s cockpit. In 2025 it added a dual-zone cocktail freezer designed as a companion to that cockpit, and an all-black finish for its flagship back-bar refrigerator, which it presents as a nod to the 1940s Black Beauty.

The company has stayed with the family. Perlick describes Perlick Corporation as a fifth-generation family business, locally owned and family-operated for more than a century, with members of the fifth generation taking leadership roles in the 2020s, and says its leadership team works with a board of directors and a Perlick family council. It describes itself as a 300,000-square-foot manufacturing company on Milwaukee’s northwest side, near homes and the Milwaukee River, and says it holds United States patents for a number of its products.

The name is the brand: the founder’s surname, which the company’s centenary account says is still on its doors. The same account quotes a maxim it attributes to Robert Perlick — build the best product you can, because a poorly made product is expensive at any price — and the company still uses it to describe its approach.

For a design guide, Perlick shows how a family name, a home city and a long record in draught beer can carry a brand from brewery brass to the home kitchen. Compare Krowne, another family-owned American maker of bar equipment, and Micro Matic, a draught beer equipment maker. For this guide we use a deep navy, brass and steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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